Services

Two 4Culture grants have enabled Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound to build a foundation for ongoing relationships with local heritage organizations, creating a model for training staff and volunteers to preserve and digitize the videotapes on their collections. In 2016, we received an NEH Collections and Reference Resources grant, enabling us to employ our established model for four organizations on a large scale. In 2017, we were awarded an NHPRC Major Initiatives grant to complete two of the collections started in the NEH grant, and work with large collections from two additional institutions. MIPoPS is also committed to work throughout the year with non-profit with video in their collections outside of of our grant funded work.

We digitize 8 different formats at MIPoPS: 3⁄4″ Umatic, VHS (including SP, EP/LP, VHS-C and S-VHS) Betacam (including SP and DigiBeta), DV (including DVPro, DVCAM and MiniDV), 1-inch, D-2, Hi8, DVD and LaserDisc. We also have a set of players reserved for appraisal, to maintain the longevity and integrity of the players we use to capture video.

MIPoPS is not a traditional digitization vendor, in that we require a degree of participation from our participating institutions, often from a volunteer there. This keeps costs down and helps educate institutions about the process. When we work with organizations, we identify expectations and needs, such as technology restrictions and the environment in which their files would be used, and goals for the content of the video. We establish an individual workflow for appraisal, selection and digitizing based on resources available at the institution, and provide structure and guidance for tape selection. Often tapes do not have accurate or useful information written on the labels which makes a minimal scan of the content essential. Depending on whether or not the institution has access to the required player(s) and can view tapes on their own, we either schedule our next meeting for appraisal or digitizing. Appraisal can take place independently at MIPoPS, space permitting. Once digitization begins, and in order to ensure that clients don’t get overwhelmed, discouraged or frustrated, we strive to deliver information in multiple ways to accommodate all learning styles. They have access to a client manual that clearly documents the process, both as a hard copy and online. We also conduct an exit interview, gathering and analyzing feedback about their experience and use it to restructure procedures and improve our process.

Making Your Videos Accessible

MIPoPS provides free public access to members’ digitized videos through the Internet Archive. Including your videos in the MIPoPS Internet Archive collection expands public access to your videos and to your institution.

A second and significant benefit of using the Internet Archive is that a copy of your videos will be stored and preserved by the Internet Archive, which is committed to preservation of Internet content for posterity. Institutions without the resources to manage their own digital repositories will at least know that a copy of their digitized content will be preserved and accessible into the future.

Digitized videos can also be shared on your institution’s own streaming site or via popular video streaming services, such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Please contact us to discuss posting your videos to the Internet Archive.

Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound is a non-profit 501-(c)(3) corporation formed to help preserve our cultural heritage by assisting archives, libraries, and other organizations with the conversion of analog video recordings to digital formats according to archival best practices.